The invention relates to intermediates useful in the synthesis of pharmaceutically active macrolide compounds and methods of synthesizing macrolide compounds. Halichondrin B is a potent anticancer agent originally isolated from the marine sponge Halichondria okadai, and subsequently found in Axinella sp., Phakellia carteri, and Lissodendoryx sp. A total synthesis of halichondrin B was published in 1992 (Aicher, T. D. et al., J. Am. Chem. Soc. 114:3162-3164). Further synthetic and structure-activity relationship studies have been discloses in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,338,865 and 5,436,238 and in Towle et al., Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research, Apr. 6-10, 2002, 5721 and Wang et al., Bioorg. Med. Chem. Lett., 10:1029-1032, 2000. Methods and intermediates for the synthesis of certain halichondrin B analogs and intermediates are described in International Publication Nos. WO 2005/118565, WO 2009/046308, WO 2009/064029, and WO 2009/124237; U.S. Pat. No. 6,214,865; Austad et al., Synlett 24(3):333-337, 2013; Austad et al., Synlett. 24(3):327-332, 2013; and Chase et al., Synlett 24(3):323-326, 2013. New methods for the synthesis of halichondrin B and its analogs (e.g., macrolide analogs) are desirable.